Every so often you come across a story so extraordinary that you can barely believe it really happened. Such is the saga of the ss Baikal, which I stumbled upon whilst innocently cataloguing a box of old photographs… By 1895… Read more

Amongst the many dark and mysterious secrets of Newcastle’s past, there is one that I have always found particularly fascinating; The Legend of ‘Half-Hung’ MacDonald. The short summary of the story is that Owen MacDonald was a soldier, executed on… Read more

On Saturday 7th March, 1829, a little after 10 o’clock, an estimated 20,000 people were on the Town Moor in Newcastle awaiting a gruesome spectacle. They were there to see Jane Jamieson’s execution, sentenced to death for the murder of… Read more

I was having a bit rummage and found this marvellous sepia photograph dated 1880:- At first sight, it appears to show a dastardly Victorian villain attempting to flee the scene of some dark deed aboard a horseless, minion-powered vehicle with feet… Read more

This year as a way of coping with a sharp reduction in Museum funding we are all being asked to find new ways of raising funds. This means that for the first time (in my memory at least) our Conservation… Read more